The African Centre for the Study of the US will host this lecture by Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin from Columbia University, New York.

The lecture will focus on an exploration of the 18th Century prodigy poet Phillis Wheatley and Toni Morrison's novel A Mercy (2008) to meditate upon the meaning of mercy. In the United States, a nation founded on principles of human freedom and the reality of chattel slavery, who is most in need of mercy? Who grants it? What is the role of mercy in the pursuit of justice and freedom?